Story-based teaching as a pedagogical strategy to foster critical literacy in language learning contexts

Abstract

Although many teachers claim to value the teaching of critical thinking, the questions and activities they design often remain at the level of literal comprehension and rarely progress toward deeper analytical engagement. This study explores story-based teaching as an instructional approach to foster critical literacy in language-learning contexts. In response to the demands of 21st-century education, critical literacy is viewed as an integration of knowledge construction, critical thinking, social awareness, ethics, and cross-cultural competence, skills needed to analyse how texts shape power relations and social meanings. Using a qualitative design, the study analyses children’s story texts and synthesizes theoretical and empirical literature to formulate an instructional model for critical literacy. The story analysis identified nine rhetorical moves and fourteen steps that characterize well-structured narratives for classroom use. The literature review led to a four-stage pedagogical framework: preparation, critical reading and discussion, critical response and application, and assessment and reflection. This framework enables students to understand narratives, question dominant ideologies, and produce counter-responses linked to real-world issues. The outcomes include a draft model of story-based critical literacy instruction and plans for publication and further research.